The present disclosure provides an apparatus and method for generating a Galois-field syndrome. One exemplary method may include loading a first data byte from a first storage device to a first register and loading a second data byte from a second storage device to a second register; ANDing the most significant bit (MSB) of the first data byte and a Galois-field polynomial to generate a first intermediate output; XORing each bit of the first intermediate output with the least significant bits (LSBs) of the first data byte to generate a second intermediate output; MUXing the second intermediate output with each bit of the first data byte to generate a third intermediate output; XORing each bit of the third intermediate output with each bit of the second data byte to generate at a fourth intermediate output; and generating a RAID Q syndrome based on, at least in part, the fourth intermediate output. Of course, many alternatives, variations and modifications are possible without departing from this embodiment.